In response to Mike’s emergency preparedness post, BlaiseP discusses the role of community in emergencies and specifically his experiences with the Amish in his area of Wisconsin, writing;
The Amish around here have been off the grid for a few centuries now. Their proscriptions on being connected to the electrical grid don’t prohibit them from generating Amish Electricity with diesel motors. They’ll make telephone calls for business, from someone else’s phone. Lots of us give them rides here and there. They’re intensely interested in how the rest of the world is doing things.
Talking to the guy who made my oak table, he says their unwillingness to modernize in certain respects is mostly to keep their own sense of community intact.
Blaise’s comment provides a pretext for the only smile-inducing 9/11 story of which I’m aware. In so doing, it permits me finally write the 9/11 memorial post I just couldn’t bring myself to write a few months back.
About a year after 9/11, I switched to the night program in law school so I could work a full time job during the day. I wound up working as a law clerk for a government agency in downtown DC a few blocks from the White House and got to be acquainted with one of the HR folks. Naturally the subject of 9/11, and what we were each doing on that day, came up for discussion.
He explained to me how, immediately after the Pentagon was hit, all of the government offices were evacuated more or less at once. The Metro of course was also simultaneously shut down and the Mother of All Traffic Jams created for those with vehicles. So of course the only way for most people to get home was to walk.
For almost anyone who worked on the opposite side of the Mall from where they lived, this inevitably meant crossing the Mall in some fashion. As a result, about 15 minutes after the Pentagon was hit, four massive walls of humanity descended more or less simultaneously upon the Mall in varying states of panic. Prior to this, the Mall itself was unusually empty for a beautiful September day due to most tourists being transfixed by the attacks in New York.
Empty that is, except for a single Amish family calmly wandering around the center of the Mall, with the patriarch staring intently at a giant unfolded tourist map. By this point the black smoke emanating from the Pentagon would likely have been visible from the Mall – it certainly dominated the view from my apartment in North Arlington.
The patriarch looks up finally and sees this mass of humanity converging upon him from all sides. He smiles and stops the first person whose attention he can grab, which was my acquaintance.
“Pardon me,” he said, “but can you tell me how to get to the Museum of Natural History*?”
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When I think of that day, my brain is flooded with images and scenes, all of them surreal in varying degrees. I always think first of watching the black smoke pouring out from the Pentagon a mile or two away from the clubhouse of my building where everyone had gathered, and the gasps from all of us assembled as we saw the two towers collapse suddenly on the television in the room.
I think of the inconsolable man sitting alone in the courtyard, his head between his knees, the fate of his loved one unknown or perhaps worse. I think of realizing hours later that the unusually low flying plane I had heard that morning over my building was probably that plane, and the dull thud I heard moments later was probably not the sound of construction but was instead the sound of 184 lives being extinguished.** I think of the image of thousands of other lives being extinguished as the towers came down, towers I had known my whole life if not in a terribly personal fashion.
I think of the surreal scene of me on the phone with my father while at least one plane’s whereabouts were still unknown, trying to make sense of what was going on around me; I think of the fighter jets scrambling north during that conversation and telling my father “Three F16s just flew by; I think they’re going to shoot it down.”*** I think of the matter-of-fact way in which I uttered that sentence, and how in the context of that moment it seemed so natural to say something so inconceivable just minutes before.
I think of the thousands of people streaming past my building after having walked across probably half of DC, the Potomac River and a good chunk of Arlington, many no doubt still with miles to go before seeing their loved ones. I think of the mother of all traffic jams on Route 50.
I think of my then-girlfriend, now wife, being prohibited from leaving her office for hours despite its proximity a few hundred yards from Langley, and the frustration of not being able to be with her, as well as the fear that there was still more to come and that she was quite possibly in harm’s way still. I think of the packed Irish pub around the corner as so many of us turned to liquid courage to calm our nerves and make sense of the chaos.
I think of learning that a college friend of mine had been amongst the last to escape the WTC alive, saved only by the sage advice of his mother and fiancee, and the relief of hearing this news. I think then of realizing how many were not as fortunate as my friend, and again I think of that inconsolable man sitting in the courtyard. I think of the photos of firefighters going up when everyone else was coming down, the visage of their faces seeming to understand what would come next if they continued to go up even as they refused to turn around.
I think too of the aftermath. Here, I first think of the strange comfort I felt in watching Bill Clinton, a man I had largely despised a day previous, provide comfort and solace and of the strange aura of normalcy, stability, and reassurance that seemed to surround him that evening. I think of George W. Bush standing atop the rubble, put a bullhorn to his mouth and shouted “I can hear you, and soon the people who knocked down these towers will hear from all of us,” and how this made me proud to be an American, even if that statement would eventually presage folly in Iraq and, increasingly, Afghanistan.
I think of the image of Humvees equipped with anti-aircraft weaponry camped out for weeks thereafter next to the Metro stop for my law school, and of soldiers armed with submachine guns patrolling the Metro. I think of the nightmares that lasted for years, and the terror I felt whenever Tom Ridge appeared on the television to announce the threat level had been raised.
I think of flying into LaGuardia a few months later, and seeing no towers. I think of experiencing lower Manhattan for the first time without those towers present.
But finally, I always return to the image and scene of the Amish family on the Mall. It is not my story; I did not experience it, and there are no pictures to document it; perhaps it is not even true. Yet the surreal and absurdist imagery of it is as vivid to me as if I had experienced it, perhaps because everything else about that day and the aftermath was so surreal. That imagery, with an obliviously calm Amish family being descended upon by a stampede of tens of thousands always helps to mitigate the profound sadness, anger, and fear that still fills me whenever I think of that day.
Whereas the other images of 9/11 to me are a tale of a loss of innocence, particularly of my own, the image of the Amish family is a tale of innocence retained, of simplicity prevailing, and indeed of hope.
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*I don’t know whether this was the museum in the original story or if it was some other Smithsonian museum, though it doesn’t really matter which one it was.
**I myself did not learn of the attacks until about 9:45 AM, as I was playing Warcraft or some such game until my freshly-awoken roommate barged in. We immediately went up to the clubhouse of the building to see if the reports of the attack on the Pentagon were true.
***As it turned out, Flight 93 had already crashed in Shanksville, PA by this time.
I learned of the attack with an ominous sense of unease. My lab partner wasn’t in class. I would later learn that all other classes had been canceled that day (and had my teacher read his e-mail, it would undoubtedly have been canceled too).
I would also later learn that my lab partner had stolen a ride on top of the last train heading into downtown (and nearly gotten shot by a cop getting off. cops tend to not like people parachuting directly beside them, under the best of circumstances).
I learned of it, and mostly shrugged. Another attack, more people dead. Life goes on. I open my mental book, and check my list — do I know anyone? No, I don’t think so. Life goes on.
My relatives took it rather well, considering they were under quarantine for the day. That was the one day I could see them, and it was cancelled. But life goes on.Report
A little dust in here, it seems.Report
A couple of years after 9/11 I spend a few weeks in the summer at Georgetown U. I remember sitting on the balcony of my dorm, right beside the Potomac, and realizing that the Potomac itself was the flight path for the Washington National Airport, and being astounded at just how low the planes were as they passed by GU. And I wondered if, after National re-opened, the folks at GU lived in a state of perpetual PTSD as low-flying jets zoomed past them.Report
From my perspective on the other bank of the river, my nerves definitely would get frayed whenever a plane sounded like it was coming in a bit closer than usual. Planes that sounded a little less loud were never a big problem for me, though; in fact, when National first reopened, those more normal sounding flights were almost a relief to hear because they symbolized a modest return to normalcy.Report
I noticed while I was there that certain weather conditions (presumably wind direction), sometimes caused planes to shift away from the river and come more directly over GU. I can see those being especially disturbing at first.Report
Great stuff Mark.Report
Not sure, but I thought Blaise lives in Illinois.Report
Blaise moves around a bit I gather.Report
If he moved to Wisconsin at some point, more credit to him…Report
I currently live here.Report
Wow. That is very, very specific.Report
Yeesh I’m just next door in Minneapolis Blaise.Report
Wow indeed. I lived in Madison until August, but currently live in St. Paul. North, Blaise, and I could have a mini-Leaguefest of our ownup here in Hudson or River Falls or something, like, tonight if we wanted. We could call it Leaguefest 2012 [With] North.Report
So let’s board the dogs lock the door
We’ll roll down Interstate 94
Be the best week of our lives I can tell
We’ll take our dream vacation in the DellsReport
There you go. Any time – I’m in.Report
I might even be able to make that one. Any chance of holding it in Ely? Or better yet, getting a permit, renting some canoes in Ely, and having a League canoe trip in the Boundary Waters?Report
Been meaning to get up to Ely for some while now, wolves and all.
A few images of where I liveReport
Ugh. Post failed hideously. Let’s try this linkReport
And a few more of the area, for good measure.Report
My kind of place (minus the Ren Fair 😉 ). Good choice of locale.Report
Wrote this soon after I’d gone to the fair:
Last year, C missed the Renaissance Fair because I flew her down to Arizona to take her up to Sedona. At the end of a long suburban road, fair maidens and doughty lads are wearing splendid finery, all a-sporting and carrying on most medieval-like.
The actual Renaissance was a spotty thing, appearing only in a few cities and within the courts and universities. All around, the Dark Ages would continue as they had for centuries. The darkness would continue well into the 20th century, until Czar Nicholas II would finally free his serfs, too late to save his empire. Yet the Renaissance lives on in the hearts of nostalgic tourists and dreamers, not as it truly was of course, with religious wars and the bitterness of the feuding nobles and the overarching stench of a world before the flush toilet, but in a few romantics and silly, beautiful people.
The Renaissance looked back to a golden age of the Greeks and Romans, as sweetly burnished as our own view of the Renaissance from the 21st century. Perhaps only the distance of time allows us to extrapolate such fantasies: the farther back they go, the lovelier they become until at last we arrive in the paradise of Eden, where we were once naked and unashamed.
Why do the legends of Arthur and Lancelot still move us? Though we think of the legends of Arthur through the lenses of twee old Tennyson, I am told the heyday of the Arthur legend was the Tudor era, itself become something of a cliché and stereotype. The Tudors claimed to be descendants of King Arthur and we’re pretty sure the Arthur depicted on the Round Table at Winchester is Henry VII.
Pursuing Arthur is the most pointless of all historical enterprises and yet not a generation has gone by since the earliest glimmers of the Renaissance without a revival of Arthur. Perhaps the wisest approach to such stories is to give them free rein to gallop. The present will become its own collection of myths, given enough time. We are such stuff as dreams are made of.
I haven’t read fantasy or science fiction in many years. Tolkien spoiled me for further reading in the genre: C gobbles this stuff up. Maybe I’ve become a snob. Let me revise that, I’m pretty sure I have become a snob. Still, I have a soft spot in my heart for this Renaissance Fair sort of thing. It reminds me of the sweet girls who loved fairy stories and the long-ago boy I was who kissed a few of them.Report
I’m down for it. I’ve been working in Twin Cities for about a year before I opened my own consulting practice out here in the sticks. Hudson, River Falls would be great.Report
JH & BP – We can talk it over. A canoe trip sounds a bit involved, maybe start with a meet & greet and go from there….Report
I lived in WI for 30 years and still have a lot of family, though I don’t I ever even drove through Augusta.
If y’all ever decide to do it, I would try hard to find an excuse to visit Mom and Dad and make a drive out to the actually attractive part of the state.Report
Fantastic! Where do Mom and Dad live?Report
Oshkosh, I also have a fair amount of family in Madison, Milwaukee and Manitowoc.Report
Awesome.Report
Michael,
I’d be up for a meet and greet, logistics permitting. But if anyone was seriously interested in a Boundary Waters canoe trip some summer, I’d be happy to handle the organization and planning.Report
Oh, I’d potentially be up for it at some point (haven’t done it in a while, but hey)! I was just thinking in terms of what to start out with. It sounds like fun for sure, but might be good to acquaint ourselves a bit before hopping in two to a hull… (or one?).Report
On the other hand, it could be convenient to have your enemy meet up with an “accident” in the deep woods. 😉Report
Give me enough warning and my wife and I are ready. We usually go to the hot springs in NM and Colo for vacations, but a canoe trip up north sounds like fun. It has been a while since we canoed for more than six hours in a year.Report
We could end up in that general region at a future date. Maybe I’ll make Leaguefest 2012 North III.Report
I obviously had not seen Blaise’s (newish?) author bio when I wrote thi initial comment. Happy to think of BP as writing from my home state when I read his stuff, however much the wayfarer he truly is at heart.Report
My 9/11 story was a plot turn in a romantic tragedy.
Then again, almost everything in 2001 was…Report
I still remember the principal of our building extolling us to continue business as usual as we watched the smoke come out of the towers on the TV in our classroom. And then insist we keep school running for the sake of normalcy when not one student was willing to do any kind of math work once they knew of the full extent of the attacks.
I respect the need to make school feel like a bedrock but I will never understand such a blindered response when dealing with teenagers….Report